


wolf by the ears

by betony



Category: Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Female Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Cho Sun?” comes Scholar Kim’s stunned voice then, all too close. “You’re Cho Sun?”</p>
<p>Some part of her still remembers her mother’s dire warnings about what would happen if anyone ever uncovered her secret, but the rest of her is a shaking, naked mass of burning nerves and bone aches--except for the one part that is always aware that some things cannot be hidden from the wolf’s nose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wolf by the ears

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt by kiki_eng for the Lady Werewolves for Lupercalia Multifandom Fest.

On stormy nights, her mother tells her the story of the river’s defense of his daughter Yuhwa from the god Haemosu. 

When the river turned into a fish, Haemosu became an otter. When the river transformed into a pheasant that could peck at the otter, Haemosu became an eagle. When the river turned into a great stag whose antlers could reach the eagle, Haemosu became a wolf. At that the river had to admit defeat, because there was nothing that could stand against a wolf in battle. 

_Your father was like Haemosu,_ whispers Mother over the steady patter of rain and the raucous laughter from the back rooms of the gibang. _He came to me a wolf, and wooed me, and I could not find it in my heart to refuse him until he disappeared into the darkness one night, leaving only you, my daughter, behind. So hush now, and go back to sleep._

It’s only later Cho Sun realizes how much of that wasn’t a story. 

* * *

Cho Sun meets Scholar Kim on the first full moon night since the beginning of term. Oh, she doesn’t mean when the gawky young student stumbled into her rooms and relieved her from Minister Ha’s odious attentions. As kind as he was then—enough to make her agree to his outrageous request for her petticoat and to prompt her declaration at the archery contest a week before—in fact that was nothing. She means the time she first sees Scholar Kim for what he truly is. 

The students at Sungkyunkwan have been drinking, the thrill of the archery contest still not having entirely worn off, and it’s this that prompts their unfortunate encounter. 

Cho Sun is on the hunt in the streets. Most nights the locks on her rooms hold, but on nights like these, with the moonlight shining down and the scent of life on the wind, she struggles against them. When she struggles, she always wins. 

The students are all staggering their way back to their dorms, which is what saves her. In their right minds, they might have thought to bring a bow and arrow to put down the creature attacking them, but as they are, all they can think of is to run. 

All but one. “I know what you are!” exclaims Scholar Kim, and brave fool that he is, actually pulls out a pen, ink, and paper and begins to write when confronted by a deadly wolf. 

It is her affection for the scholar, and her gratitude, that makes Cho Sun watch him, mystified, until he darts forward to slip a folded twist of paper behind her ear. Whatever the spell is, whichever musty text he found it in, this brings on the transformation early, and Cho Sun howls with pain as she curls back into herself, human once more. 

She hears footsteps—Scholar Kim’s?—running towards her. “Cho Sun?” comes Scholar Kim’s stunned voice then, all too close. “You’re Cho Sun?” 

Some part of her still remembers her mother’s dire warnings about what would happen if anyone ever uncovered her secret, but the rest of her is a shaking, naked mass of burning nerves and bone aches--except for the one part that is always aware that some things cannot be hidden from the wolf’s nose. 

It is the one protection she has left, and she doesn’t hesitate to use it. 

“And you,” Cho Sun pronounces with the utmost dignity, “are a woman.” 

* * *

Scholar Kim visits her far more often after that, despite the mixed reactions of her friends. Scholar Lee disapproves, but then, based on Scholar Kim’s stories, Scholar Lee apparently disapproves of _everything._ Gu Yong Ha finds it all too amusing, but by Cho Sun’s own experience, Yong Ha finds everything amusing. The rest of the school seems to fall somewhere between these two extremes, most attributing it to yet more of the legend of Daemul, manliest student to grace Sungkyunkwan’s campus in known history. 

Scholar Kim ignores all this, smiling at the other girls on the way to Cho Sun’s rooms and bowing in response to Cho Sun’s own formal welcome. Then Cho Sun bends to her tea set and prepares her brew; Scholar Kim darts behind a changing screen, and emerges as Yoon Hee, radiant daughter of a respected scholar clad in a gisaeng’s faded hanbok. 

(Yoon Hee’s transformations are always so easy. The unfairness of this catches in Cho Sun’s throat sometimes, but she swallows it down. That is yet another of the arts she has mastered.) 

They drink tea sometimes, in silence when Cho Sun can manage it, or with a steady stream of prattle about Yoon Hee’s misadventures, her hopeless crush on Scholar Lee, the many ways in which she comes close to betraying her secret every day. 

Cho Sun tolerates this. Yoon Hee stores up her worries and her stories to share with her mother and her brother when given holidays from the university, and when the urge and opportunity to confide in someone else comes, she reaches for it with both hands. Unlike Cho Sun, she didn’t have to learn forbearance early. 

“I’ve never had a friend before,” says Yoon Hee one night. 

Cho Sun looks down demurely. A client is a client, and years of training dictate certain behaviors, even if the client is a fellow woman in disguise who comes to her only to speak to someone who already knows her secret. She can’t even bring herself to treat Yoon Hee as she does her fellow gisaengs, offering advice and comfort. It’s easier to fall back on habit. 

“Scholar Kim has many friends,” she murmurs. 

“Well, yes.” Yoon Hee shrugs. “He does. But Kim Yoon Hee had none.” 

The wind on her back as she runs, the exhilaration of catching your own prey, the irritation of a thick coat of fur during summer: all this Yoon Hee will never know. But she lives with this, too; secrecy and loneliness and terror, and all that Yoon Hee understands, perhaps all too well. 

“You do now,” says Cho Sun, voice strident and tolerating no argument. She has never spoken to anyone in such a tone before. She finds she likes it. 

Yoon Hee beams. 

* * *

The Minister's visit leaves Cho Sun in such a state that even when Scholar Kim enters—no, not Scholar Kim, Yoon Hee disguised as Scholar Kim, Cho Sun doesn’t have to hide away her agitation with her—she is still shaking. 

“What’s wrong?” asks Yoon Hee at once. 

Cho Sun wants very much not to tell her. She does not have to ask what Yoon Hee’s thoughts on the Red Messenger are, and she can guess her opinion of the imposter Red Messenger who contorts and confuses the message to the people of Joseon. Yoon Hee’s visits have already become more infrequent; why end them altogether? 

But Yoon Hee deserves the truth, so she confesses all. 

“Minister Ha and Minister Lee—“ Yoon Hee’s face twists as she repeats the name, and there is a story there, more so than simple passion for the man's son “—wish you to kill Yoon Cham-gun before he leaves tonight. Minister Ha has sent you to kill others, too.” 

“As a warrior,” Cho Sun clarifies. “If he knew he could pin more murders on a wild wolf, he’d have done it already.” 

“But you won’t go, because it’s not a just action—“ 

“I _can’t_ go tonight,” Cho Sun corrects, “ because tonight is full moon.” The spell Yoon Hee has taught her keeps the transformation at bay, but not the pain. She’s useless tonight; but then again, if she wasn’t, she would be a monster. A woman like her doesn’t have many choices. 

Yoon Hee stares at her knees. “I’ve wanted to ask Yoon Cham-gun a few questions myself,” she says at last. “Don’t worry and rest well. Minister Ha will see you capturing him tonight.” 

* * *

She might have known it would all go wrong. 

Yoon Hee suffers from many faults, first of which might be an inability to tell her friends anything if not forced to it, second of which is her ignorance of what a man like Minister Ha might do if not sufficiently convinced of Cho Sun’s competence. It turns into a brawl, in the end, between the disguised Yoon Hee, her friends, and the other hired thugs Minister Ha sends. 

From as far away from the gibang, Cho Sun can smell it, and the instinctual panic is enough to make her discard the spell and suffer through the transformation willingly. After that, it’s only a matter of minutes to race through the streets and decide the fight squarely in Yoon Hee’s favor. 

Except Yoon Hee doesn't seem to appreciate this fact. 

Cho Sun growls with exasperation, and with that, Yoon Hee blinks, pulls down her dark mask, and brings out another copy of the spell to turn Cho Sun back, gingerly stepping around the corpses of her attackers. Behind her, Scholar Lee and the true Red Messenger, each holding onto the hapless Yoon Cham-gun, gape wordlessly. 

When Cho Sun is human again, and clothed in the tunic Yoon Hee forces Jae-shin to loan her, Yoon Hee turns on her. “They might have seen you! What were you thinking?” 

“You,” snarls Cho Sun—there is still too much of the wolf about her, it roars and bites and makes her want to do terrible things—“You would have done the same for me. You already have.” She forces herself to take a breath, and then another. When she speaks, her voice is as light as ever. “If nothing else, I would have expected Scholar Kim to defend me, were I caught and brought to justice.” 

Yoon Hee stares at her for a long moment, and her eyes gleam with intellectual passion. “I could—there is a precedent, in the annals of the court from two hundred years back, that should be seen as a defense of—“ 

Cho Sun raises a hand to silence her. “Later,” she warns. “First, Kim Yoon Hee, tell me now: what trouble have you gotten yourself into?” 

Yoon Hee lets out a gusty sigh but, faced with Cho Sun’s unrelenting gaze, at last realizes the wisdom of surrender. The blood of wolves runs in Cho Sun’s veins, after all, and she is never so easily defeated. Certainly not when she’s defending a friend. 

“Cho Sun,” says Yoon Hee, “how much do you know about the geumdeungjisa?” 

* * *

They say that when they finally uncovered the geumdeungjisa, cause of so many reforms in our land, it had tooth and claw marks around the edge. 

They say the great Daemul, upon completing his studies, paid for the freedom of the most famous gisaeng in the country and had the audacity to set her up as Beloved Sister in the household he maintained with his twin Yoon Hee and her husband. 

They say there are still wolves that roam the hills near Sungkyunkwan, but they will never have to know loneliness, no matter who—or what—they are. 

But these things are only stories, and it not for you or I or even the greatest minds at Sungkyunkwan to work out the truth of them. So hush now, my child, and go to sleep.


End file.
